Student startups: Soundsensing

In this segment Tuntreet speaks to start-ups and companies who were started at NMBU. In the previous edition we spoke to Thermal Green, who is less than a year old. Now we’re speaking to a company with a history from 2019, so the perspective will be slightly different in this edition.

Journalist: Henrik Bakken
Translator: Amalie Pedersen Brønmo
Photographer: Jørgen Berg Yndestad

The company we’re speaking to is called Soundsensing AS. We want to figure out how to handle the hardship newly established companies can face, and which experiences you gain after five years as an entrepreneur. We were invited to Soundsensing’s offices in Øvre Slottsgate, just a stone’s throw away from the Norwegian Parliament. Their manager, Ole Johan Aspestrand Bjerke, truly believes this to be true, if you’re a good thrower.

Aspestrand Bjerke takes us through Soudsensing’s whole history. He wants to point out that Soundsensing exists only due to Eik Lab and NMBU, and especially thanks to the brothers Kristian and Ola Omberg, who have been essential. When Aspestrand Bjerke had written his master thesis, he had multiple job offers. Despite this, Kristian Omberg contacted him and said: “I’ve got a student, called Jon, who is super smart. He has created a technology, and we think a company should be created around it.” He wondered if Aspestrand Bjerke wanted to be the “power behind the punch”. That was the beginning of Soundsensing.

Back then, the main idea was capturing the noise in buildings, including noise pollution, which is a big challenge. They got a lot of attention early on, but Aspestrand Bjerke describes the phase they were in as a “solution looking for a problem”. They managed to discover sound problems, just not solving them. Still, this was an idea that got a lot of attention. But the customers didn’t see the potential use, and therefore didn’t want to buy it. They realized that they needed to change, more about this later.

They key to how they would continue came from costumers themselves asking for predictive maintenance and condition monitoring. By using machine learning and sounds, the sensor can register errors before something goes wrong. This is very useful for big buildings with extensive ventilation systems. Because the system can learn how a ventilation system is supposed to sound, it can also learn how it’s not supposed to sound. Today, they have 16 million hours of data from 2500 different ventilation systems. This was exactly what people wanted.

“We can’t have an old janitor down there 24 hours a day.”

Aspeland Berg is humble when it comes to talking about the had times and challenges of starting a company. “Starting a company is an uphill” he says and draws a parallel to the Greek legend of Sisyphus. He thinks especially of two incidents. Changing the product was a bummer, he thinks. At that time, they had already gone out in the media and got investors who were in on their idea, and then it didn’t work out. They had to change the product, but he adds that the need to build something good was more important than his pride at that moment. Where many companies might have given up because of their pride or lack of knowledge about the potential of their product, this company changed their course to what is today’s technical solution.

The second challenge started three years ago when they upscaled, after securing capital worth between 25 and 30 million NOK. They hired more people and made great plans for their way forward. However, it didn’t take long before they saw that their sales figures were not good enough, and that the money was leaving the bank faster than planned. They went too quickly, and they had to reduce their spending to buy some more time. “ I simply had to fire 6 people I had just hired”, “that is the most challenging thing we have done so far”. Looking back, he still thinks it was the right decision.

It’s no surprise that Aspestrand Bjerke also is educated in psychology, because he has several ideas of which personal abilities you need to have as an entrepreneur. With a sparkle in his eye, he gives us two essential traits you need to have: humility and faith in yourself. Paradoxically, it’s two traits that you need to be a good equilibrist to master. The advice he would give to other entrepreneurs is to find people who are better than yourself.

Aspestrand Bjerke reveals that this year is the first year that they will be profitable. The need for the sensors is there, and they believe in a bright future. Five years have passed, and strictly speaking, they can’t call themselves a startup much longer. Yet it does give a perspective to other entrepreneurs, that good results don’t necessarily come in no time. Now, there are 4 employees, where the others are working with developing the technology and the company. They have about 60 customers, including all the big names in property: Thon, Statsbygg, Oslobygg, Malling and more. Not all companies manage to get over the barrier that Soundsensing got over now. Tuntreet thanks for the visit and wishes them good luck on their journey.